Where Your Heart Lies
by ChapterEight
Summary: Gabriel was all ready to admit defeat and give up and retreat back to witness protection, or whatever new version of it he could scrape together on such short notice. Then Lucifer had to be all "I know where your heart truly lies," and Gabriel had to face truths he'd run from for millennia. He had always been in danger of joining Lucifer's fall, if only his brother had ever asked.
1. Prologue: Uncomfortable Truths

**Disclaimer:** _Supernatural_ was created by Eric Kripke and is, as far as I can tell, owned by him, Kripke Enterprises, and Warner Brothers Television. In any event, it isn't owned by me, and this story is for fun and not for profit.

 **Author's Notes:** This is an AU that explores possible meanings behind Lucifer saying "I know where your heart truly lies" to Gabriel in "Hammer of the Gods," each one probably crazier than the last. It will contain some not-so-pleasant things (which should be obvious from the pairings), including non-con.

I use some dialogue from "Hammer of the Gods" in this chapter. I didn't copy and paste all of it, as that would be boring, but just used enough to create a solid foundation for Gabriel's introspection and my jumping off point from canon. Future chapters generally won't have so much show dialogue.

* * *

"Maybe those freaks in there aren't your blood," Dean told him with all the self-righteousness of Michael and none of the understanding, "but they are your family." Gabriel really did not want to have this conversation, but Dean just would not shut up. "Now they're gonna die in there, without you."

And really, for Gabriel, it all came down to one thing. A simple, unwavering truth that Dean, of all people, really should have understood.

"I can't kill my brother."

Dean looked at him with such moral indignation that Gabriel really should have smote him where he stood. "Can't or won't?"

 _Both_! he wanted to shout. Honestly, Dean had made a deal to save his brother, had willingly gone to hell just so his brother could live. And Sam! Sam had tried everything he knew how to try and then some when Gabriel had killed Dean for good on that Wednesday, and he had single-mindedly tracked Gabriel down and stopped at nothing to get his brother for even a few short months before Dean boarded the crazy train straight to the pit.

How could either of them honestly ask Gabriel to actually _kill_ _his own_ _brother_ with his own hands, when neither of the Winchesters could even let the other stay dead when someone else did the killing _for_ them?

And yeah, sure, Gabriel really did care about the other pagan gods. Well, some of them anyway, and some a lot more than others. (Fuck Baldur. Kali certainly had.) But he had only been one of them for like a few thousand years, tops. Lucifer had been his brother for countless—literally countless!—eons before Earth or humans or pagan gods or anything else had even existed.

So what if Lucifer had turned the last fifty thousand years or so into an enormous black hole of despair and fratricide and general suck assery? He was still Gabriel's brother, and fifty thousand years to an archangel was like fifteen thousandths of a second of Dean Winchester's puny human existence.

Gabriel couldn't kill Lucifer. It had nothing to do with physical prowess or magical mojo (although those were questionable) and everything to do with the fact that Gabriel _could not_ kill his brother without completely wrecking his own psyche while he was at it. Then the world would just be trading their evil overlord Satan for their new evil overlord Gabriel, because any archangel who'd gone Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs was a major danger to anyone and everyone and everything around him.

And Gabriel wouldn't kill Lucifer because he just didn't want to. Period. End of story. Put a lid on it and zip it into one of those vacuum sealed bags and punt it into Purgatory and give it to one of the Leviathans to swallow, because the Winchesters would have an easier time finding their answer there than getting Gabriel to kill his brother.

Except, of course, that Gabriel had inherited Lucifer's damnable curiosity and penchant for getting into world-destroying kinds of trouble. It might (probably would) be the death of him, but now that he was so close he couldn't resist seeing Lucifer. It had been tens of thousands of years since he'd seen any of his brothers. (He just meant Luci and Mikey and Raphe, of course. The seraphim and angels and all the other Winged Ass Monkeys might as well be separate species, so different were they from archangels.)

Gabriel had never gone back to Heaven after leaving the first time, because he'd known that he'd never have been able to leave again if either Michael or Raphael had caught him. Leaving the first time had been the hardest thing he'd ever done in his billions of years of existence; he couldn't have done it again, especially not if his older brothers had a chance to try to talk him out of it.

So long story short, if he'd just taken his own damned advice and blown Jonestown before Lucifer had shown up, then he'd have been able to ignore the whole situation and keep his head down for a little while later until one of his dickbag brothers won. But he hadn't. He'd waited. And as soon as the fox had landed in the henhouse, Gabriel's Grace had gone haywire with the want and the feels and the longing and the pure, unadulterated _need._

And then there was his brother. _His brother_! Right in front of him.

Okay, so his vessel looked like it'd been run over by a Zamboni, but Gabriel could see past that to his brother's true form underneath. Okay, so Lucifer's true form was dark where it had once been the brightest in Heaven, and okay, so it kind of hurt Gabriel in some visceral way somewhere deep down inside to see Lucifer's pitch black feathers where once they had been even more colorful and beautiful than all the dawns put together.

But it was still every bit his brother. If Dean hadn't been okay with killing his brother just because he'd drunk demon blood out of some lady's brain stem and let the devil out of his cage, and Sam hadn't been okay with killing his brother just because he'd broken the first seal that started this whole clusterfuck in the first place, then how could they expect Gabriel to be okay with killing his brother just because he was…

Okay, so Gabriel's brother was Satan.

That didn't stop every ounce of Gabriel's Grace and every follicle of his vessel's skin and every plumule and barbule of every feather on every one of his six golden wings from quivering with longing just to be in Lucifer's presence.

He'd resisted the pull, of course. Called Lucifer on his bullshit and called him a great big bag of dicks. It wasn't like it wasn't one million percent true. But then Lucifer had used that tone.

"Gabriel… if you're doing this for Michael…"

It was the same tone he'd used when Gabriel had been little more than a newborn, when he'd clung to Lucifer's wingtips with all the ferocity a miniature archangel could muster and refused to go with Raphael as he'd been meant to. That's how it worked: Michael raised Lucifer, and Lucifer raised Raphael, and Raphael should have raised Gabriel. But Gabriel hadn't existed for a full millisecond before he'd realized that Raphael was a sack full of boring. Lucifer had taken Gabriel's affections in stride. He'd probably just wanted another chance to rear someone with some kind of personality, since he'd failed so miserably with Raphe. (Gabriel was probably being a little unfair to Raphael, but only a little.)

Lucifer's tone infuriated Gabriel.

"Screw him!" he snapped, cutting his older brother off mid-sentence. "If he were standing here, I'd shiv his ass too!"

And Lucifer had the—the—the unmitigated _gall_ to be angry on Michael's behalf?! As if _Gabriel_ were the disloyal one?!

Gabriel hadn't wanted to argue. He'd known, of course, that seeing Lucifer could only have ended in an argument and probably in his own untimely end. But he hadn't wanted it. He'd hoped for more.

Argue they did, though, until Lucifer had addressed him with such sincere sorrow, almost whispering, "Brother, don't make me do this."

The corner of Gabriel's mouth turned up just the smallest bit. "No one makes _us_ do anything."

Not even their God, apparently. Just ask Lucifer.

Gabriel was all ready to admit defeat and give up and retreat back to witness protection, or at least whatever new version of it he could scrape together on such short notice. It was all set. Lucifer would be arrogant enough to think that Gabriel was still using the old tricks his older brother had taught him, of course, and he'd go for the decoy while Gabriel made his escape.

But then he had to say it, damn him. All "Oh, Gabriel, I know where your heart truly lies," and Gabriel read so much between those lines that he could hardly stay upright.

He should have let Lucifer turn for the decoy behind him. He should have hoped that his replica kept his brother distracted for long enough that Gabriel could make a clean getaway, then ditch his longtime vessel (as much as he loved it) and fly as fast and as far away as three pairs of wings could take him.

Instead he used his wings to cross the few feet between them and grab Lucifer's arm just as his brother was turning to face the decoy behind him. Lucifer was obviously startled, but before he could react Gabriel had planted his other hand firmly on his brother's chest over his heart.

"My heart lies here, where it always has," he said in a much stronger voice than he'd imagined. "With Samael."

He thought he might have actually broken Satan. His brother's cold Grace flared darker in anger for a moment and then abruptly deflated into something small and almost contrite. Well, small in relative terms, of course, meaning that it had gone from the size of four Yankee Stadiums to the size of maybe three Yankee Stadiums. Archangels couldn't contract much more than that even in the purely ethereal dimension their Graces usually inhabited.

The point was that Lucifer clearly hadn't heard his true name in almost as long as Gabriel, which was unsurprising. Only other archangels would have had he balls to go against Father's orders and call him Samael instead of Lucifer, which was the title his brother had been forced to embrace after he'd been tossed out of Heaven and his name no longer spoken. Mikey and Raphe wouldn't have gone against their Father's wishes, of course, but Gabriel didn't have that problem. He hadn't been struck with any lightning bolts yet, so he assumed that Father really didn't give a shit after all.

The two archangels had gone from one brother intent on murdering the other to peering uncomfortably into each others eyes in calm too still to be natural. And Gabriel knew that Dean had been right that he had been too afraid to face his family, but he had to accept finally that it wasn't just because he didn't want to watch his brothers kill each other.

It was because he wouldn't have survived intact had Michael killed Lucifer, and he wouldn't have been able to say no had Lucifer asked him to stand against Michael, no matter how much it would have killed him to stand with one brother against another.

It was a truth he'd always run from. He'd run because he hadn't _wanted_ to stand against any of his brothers, but he would have done it for Lucifer even if it had wounded him in ways that would only scar mentally. Gabriel loved Lucifer more than Father. More than Mikey or Raphe. More than the humans and more than the pagan gods. And, Father help him, he loved Lucifer more than he loved himself.

The ass-hat had that effect on people, apparently.

Lucifer broke the silence. "I haven't heard that name in…" he began, then trailed of as if he didn't know how to complete the thought.

"Your name," emphasized Gabriel. "It's not 'that name' like it's what the kids at school used to call you before you lost weight and outgrew your ginger phase. It's _your name_."

In another dimension, Lucifer's obsidian wings flexed in indecision and mild discomfort.

"I am not Samael anymore, brother. But I am Lucifer still," he said in that same pleading voice he'd used to beg Gabriel not to try to fight him. "Gabriel, join me."

Gabriel's wings flared and he reflexively tightened his grasp on his brother's body so much that he would have torn apart a mortal man.

"Will you kill me if I say no?"

Lucifer glared at him as if it were a ridiculous question. "No!"

"You were going to kill me like thirty seconds ago!" Gabriel pointed out quite reasonably.

His brother reached out decisively and wrapped his vessel's hand in the razor-sharp feathers of Gabriel's uppermost wing. The gesture was absurdly intimate and nearly made Gabriel accidentally cause a cataclysmic shift in the Wabash Valley Fault System that ran under the state.

"I thought that you had chosen humans over me, and still I would have let you go if you had tried to walk away. I haven't wept in fifty thousand years, but I would have wept if you had forced me to kill you." Lucifer tugged his wing again and offered a smirk. "Besides, it was totally more like ninety seconds ago. Stop being so dramatic."

Of course there was a lot more to hammer out between them, so much more that it almost boggled even Gabriel's mind to think about it, but he had always been in danger of saying yes if only his brother had ever asked. And that was before he had ever experienced things like jealousy and lust firsthand. It didn't seem like such a horrible idea to fall when he hadn't been home in thousands of years anyway.

"Okay, whatever," he agreed flippantly, "but only if you promise to keep me elbow deep in Butterfingers and Tootsie Pops. Oh, and only if you promise not to get all smitey when I tell you about the Winchesters."

* * *

 **Citations:** The dialogue from "Hammer of the Gods" belongs to Eric Kripke, Andrew abb, Daniel Loflin, and David Reed.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** Yeah, I am a firm wishful thinker in the school of Gabriel Lives. I just can't believe that after thousands of years living as Loki, away from Lucifer, that he would have been dumb enough to use a trick that Lucifer had taught him. But a trick based on tricking Lucifer into thinking he would? That I can see.

I sometimes play kind of fast and loose with various theological canons with respect to the identifies of angels and other things, but that really shouldn't bother anyone who watches _Supernatural_. Samael doesn't really exist as such in Christian lore, only in Talmudic lore and the like (i.e. primarily Rabbinic Judaism). Samael was _a_ satan and did a lot of the things, such as tempting Eve and seducing Lilith, that Christians later attributed to their idea of _the_ Satan, which of course later became associated with _the_ devil and the name Lucifer.

I just thought, hey, Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Lucifer—one of these things is not like the others. So I decided that Samael is his name and Lucifer (meaning light-bringer or morning dawn) is just a title, which substituted for his real name after he fell.


	2. More or Less

Lucifer was understandably a bit upset about the whole key to the cage thing. He was upset not so much that Gabriel had told the Winchesters about it at all as that Gabriel hadn't used it to free him millennia ago.

"You knew this whole time!" he raged, his eyes glowing a fiery red-orange that had once matched the color of his wings when he'd been at his full glory. "And you just left me down there to rot because, what, it was too much fun slumming it as a demi-god?"

"Nooo…" replied Gabriel, half trying to keep the sass out of his voice out of respect for the fact that he still wasn't sure whether his brother would kill him. "I didn't open the cage because, one, you were being a giant dickbag, and two, I needed Death's help, and only you and Michael know how to open _his_ cage. You have to admit that it was a good plan to require Death's help to free you, since you were in no position to tell anyone how and Michael… Well, we both know how Michael is."

That made his brother pause in his anger, even enough to ignore the insult. The Grace leaking out of his vessel subsided enough that he'd probably only caused a catastrophic ice storm in the tri-state area and not the entire Midwest.

Gabriel gestured vaguely towards his brother's body. "And you've got to stop doing that! Look at yourself, you're falling apart as it is!"

But Lucifer had apparently stopped paying attention somewhere back around the first mention of Death. That was probably a blessing in disguise, since it kept him from pondering too deeply the question of whether Gabriel had actually considered trying to free him in the first place. Never mind that he couldn't have done it even if he'd wanted to, he was sure that his brother would be furious that Gabriel had never even seriously considered it.

"Death?" spat Lucifer.

"All of the horsemen. Their rings—" began Gabriel, but Lucifer understood immediately (he had been Dad's favorite son and most trusted lieutenant, after all, and therefore was probably more knowledgeable than anybody about how Dad's mind worked) and cut his brother off with a dark chuckle.

"Their rings. Of course. And the Winchesters already have two of them." He clenched his jaw and cracked his neck, a little too hard and too far to one side for the human inside to survive if Lucifer didn't heal his body when he was through with it. "I will have to take Death's and Pestilence's rings from them—they are valuable weapons, but this cannot be allowed to stand—and when I find the Winchesters, I will take the other rings and wipe all memory of them from their minds so that Sam does not hold onto false hope."

Gabriel rolled his eyes heavenward for a moment, as if praying to their Father for patience. He didn't pray, of course; he never had since dear old Dad had abandoned them.

"The last thing you want to do is stop the Winchesters' plan or wipe it from their minds."

Lucifer frowned at him and scrunched his brow in a way that uncomfortably reminded Gabriel of Sam. "Brother," he said with a hint of a question and undeniable menace, "I really think I do."

"No, you don't," Gabriel insisted firmly. He was fairly certain now that his brother wasn't going to kill him for speaking out or for anything, really, other than betrayal. "We both know that Dean is never going to say yes to Michael. And he may be your true vessel, but I think I know Sam Winchester a little better than you do, brother. As long as Dean is alive and there to say no, he will never willingly say yes."

The only sign that Lucifer was annoyed was a twitch at the very tip of his uppermost set of wings, but Gabriel saw it out of the corner of his eye and paused long enough to reach for Lucifer's hand, the one that had been wrapped in Gabriel's feathers a short time ago. Lucifer startled a bit at the touch, which was unsurprising given his complete isolation for so long in the cage. And Gabriel bet that he hadn't been big on physical contact for this thousands of years on Earth before that. Gabriel tenderly squeezed the cold skin beneath his own and offered his brother a rueful smile.

"Sam may do all kinds of monumentally stupid things if the combined forces of Heaven and Hell pull enough of his strings that he thinks he's doing the right thing, but he has never willingly done anything that he _knew_ would hurt Dean. I turned the kid into a car and gave him herpes— _herpes_!—and he still wouldn't consider saying yes. And trust me when I tell you that if you kill Dean, Sam just turns into an even bigger pain in your ass than he already is. The only chance you have is to manipulate him into saying yes because he thinks that it's the only way to shove your ass back in the cage."

That speech was met with silence, which, all things considered, was a good sign. If Lucifer had been completely against the idea, he would have said so immediately. Probably in some really painful way. Silence had to mean that he was at least considering it.

Gabriel took the opportunity to catalogue the feel of his brother's ice-cold fingers entwined with his and the still-jolting sight of his black feathers and the shadows that were permanently cast over his once-bright grace. He got so lost in the task that he couldn't tell how much time had passed when Lucifer finally noticed him looking, but he was immediately captured by the wide smile that his brother offered.

He barely saw the expression across the vessel's mottled face, but he was absolutely captivated by his brother's true form underneath. He would probably always miss the old Lucifer, the one who had been the brightest light in heaven. But even if his grace had changed from light to dark, the exquisite form of his face and his smooth body remained unchanged, and he was still the most beautiful creature their Father had ever created.

Certainly he was the most beautiful that Gabriel had ever seen, and it didn't take much effort at all for Gabriel to transfer his affections from the Morning Star to the Dark Prince.

Finally, Lucifer asked, "You gave my vessel herpes?"

Gabriel stared at his brother for several long seconds, completely forgetting to breathe or blink. Then he allowed himself to laugh and his grace to light up with a joy he hadn't felt since their Father had introduced the first human to his angels.

* * *

That was more or less how Gabriel found himself sitting cross-legged on a ratty couch in an abandoned house, listening to Sam Winchester argue with the old hunter who clearly had more sense than Sam and Dean put together. He had proven that back at the college, when the Winchester brothers had let Gabriel get between them with almost no effort at all before Singer had arrived. And then again when he'd tried his best to set Sam straight after Gabriel had killed Dean.

"You can't do it!" Singer exclaimed, which did nothing except produce a stubborn expression on Sam's face. "What I did was a million-to-one, and that was some piss-ant demon I was brain wrestling. You're talking about taking back control from Satan himself!"

"Yeah," agreed Sam, in a tone that said he was willfully ignoring the distinction. "Yeah, I am."

Gabriel was really glad that Sam had thought of the idea all on his own. Really, he was—it meant that he didn't have to be the one to bring it up, which would have had a really good chance of backfiring since Sam would understandably be suspicious of his intentions. He was also really glad that Bobby's reaction was to challenge Sam's ability to have his way with Satan, given that telling a Winchester they couldn't do something was the single best way to make them try.

"I'm strong enough," insisted Sam, and Gabriel could tell that he was trying to convince himself more than anything.

"You ain't," Singer responded immediately. "He's gonna find every chink in your armor, Sam, and use it against you—your fear, your grief, your anger. And let's face it—You're not exactly Mr. Anger Management. How are you gonna control the devil when you can't control yourself?"

Granted, the way Bobby handled Sam's determination made Gabriel's prior assessment of the man's good sense take a fatal blow. He should have known better than to tell Sam he wasn't capable of doing it, if what he wanted to do was talk the kid out of trying. But it was the best thing he could have done for Gabriel's purpose.

He waited until Sam had stopped scowling in irritation, watching as the hunter tossed his phone carelessly onto a dusty table and paced around the room with barely contained frustration, before he made himself visible with an audible snap of his fingers.

"Ya know… you _do_ have to try," he said as Sam spun around at the sound of his snap.

Sam stopped his movement with his knife already unsheathed, and he let it fall limply to his side and his mouth fall open in speechless shock when he saw who it was.

Gabriel conjured a hot-chocolate flavored lollipop and plopped it into his mouth. Sam still hadn't spoken by the time Gabriel had made a show of taking two salacious licks, so he tucked it into the side of cheek and snapped his fingers again as he made another appear in Sam's still-open mouth.

That seemed to jerk the hunter out of his stupor. He brought his free hand up to remove the sucker from his mouth, which Gabriel thought was rather a waste, and blurted, " _Gabriel_?"

"Sammy!" responded Gabriel, opening his arms enthusiastically as if he expected a hug.

Sam ignored the gesture, of course, in favor of stating the obvious. "I thought you were dead!"

Gabriel pulled his lollipop out of his mouth with a loud smack. "I know. Even I thought I was a goner for sure when I decided to help you knuckleheads escape from my brother."

"But… how—how did you…?"

"Barely, that's how!" Gabriel unfolded himself and leaned back more comfortably against the back of the decrepit sofa as he glared at the hunter. "And you can only use your invincible army once, Longshanks, so the next time you face my brother you'd better be ready for him to ride your tight ass."

Sam barely even scowled at that last comment. Gabriel could see the questions and comments rapidly flit across his mind before he discarded them one by one. Hell, the kid's thoughts were so open on his face that Gabriel probably wouldn't have even needed to be able to read minds to figure them out. In the end, though, Sam seemed to realize that he wasn't going to get anything out of the archangel that Gabrie didn't volunteer.

He crossed the room in one stride of those long legs and sank down next to Gabriel. The couch creaked alarmingly at their combined weight, and for a moment Gabriel was afraid that he'd have to teleport himself to safety before it collapsed. But it seemed to hold, at least for the moment, and then he was distracted by the way Winchester's leg fell against his own. This would be his brother's body soon, and oh the things Gabriel could do with it then….

Sam bent forward to rest his elbows on his knees, letting his head rest in his hands and his hair flop forward into his face.

"Do you think I can do it?"

Gabriel eyed the long, graceful line of his back up to his neck.

"Nope," he replied, taking another lick of his sucker for lack of anything else to do. "But you don't exactly have a choice, do you? So I guess I'll have to help you get up to speed."

The kid raised his head and looked at him with a dubious expression mixed with just a bit of desperate hope. "You can teach me how to take back control?"

Gabriel made a show of biting his lip in indecision. He wouldn't have to answer now, he knew, because he could sense the demon who was with Dean rapidly approaching their location. Sam would be able to hear them in a matter of seconds. For now, Gabriel was just laying the groundwork of his relationship with the younger Winchester.

"I can help you," he told Sam, leaving it at that and letting his eyes flash golden just as the roar of the Impala became discernable to human ears. "Keep working on finding the rings. Try to ease your brother into the idea that I'm alive. I'll be back when you're alone."

"You're leaving?" Sam asked, the incredulity making his voice raise half an octave higher than usual. "You could help us!"

"I told you: your get out of jail free card was only good for one turn. If you want your plan to work, you won't spill the beans to your demon friends or anyone else who might tell Lucifer that he didn't manage to kill me quite as dead as he'd thought. Kapisch?"

Sam stared at him beseechingly with his puppy eyes and his floppy hair and his endearing features—Gabriel could only imagine how well his brother would be able to use _those_ —but finally he sighed and said, "Yeah… Yeah, okay."

Gabriel gave him a nod of acknowledgment and disappeared from the room just before Crowley teleported in.

* * *

"It went well, then?"

Lucifer's grace had announced his presence to his brother long before he'd spoken, of course, but even though he was prepared for it Gabriel still shivered at the sound of Lucifer's voice. In a good way, of course. The best way.

"It went better than expected, even," he replied with a smile. "Sam already had the idea all on his own that the only way to get you back into the cage is from the inside, so all I have to do is keep him on the right track and run interference with his brother."

"His brother would truly try to stop him from saving the world?" Lucifer asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

Gabriel's lips twitched, but he managed not to laugh. He had learned in the few days they had managed to spend together since their reunion that Lucifer disliked being laughed at even more than he had when he'd still been called Samael. He tolerated Gabriel's laughter when it was not aimed at him, but he rarely joined in even for that.

"You bet your ass he would," he managed to say with a straight face. "Dean sold his soul and spent decades in the pit because he couldn't live without his brother. Dean can sacrifice himself and expect in that hypocritical big-brother head of his for Sam to move on with his life, but he would never allow Sam to sacrifice his life or allow himself to move on if his brother died."

Lucifer made a barely audible hum of understanding, and Gabriel wanted to ask if that kind of mentality was why his older brother had never asked him to take his side. But he was afraid of the answer he would receive, so he kept his trap shut. They had both been doing that about all the personal topics they clearly were not ready to talk about. For all their billions upon billions of years of shared history, they had very few safe subjects to talk about. Gabriel supposed that was just the way things had to be when you had both lived blissfully in Heaven for eons (and not so blissfully too, sometimes, like that whole thing with Dad's sister), until one of you had ruined it, and now for the past few thousand years one of you had been locked in a cage in the center of Hell and the other had been pretending he was a pagan god.

Lucifer joined Gabriel on the comfortable couch he had brought into existence, and they both lapsed into a silence that was at once comfortable and uncomfortable. It was comfortable in the same way that they had always been in each other's presence—they used to just sit together in quiet contemplation for years at a time, back before the lesser angels or the planets or the humans had been created, and time had meant even less to them than it did now.

It was uncomfortable because now, unlike back then, they were only silent because they didn't know what to say to each other.

Eventually, when he couldn't take it anymore, Gabriel ventured, "Castiel may be a problem, unless there are enough shreds of his faith left for him to trust in another archangel."

Lucifer did not quite jerk—archangels did not jerk, not in surprise or otherwise—but he certainly sat up rather more quickly than usual.

"Castiel? The fledgling?"

His voice had taken on a peculiar quality that made Gabriel anxious in a way he couldn't pin down. He turned to fully face his brother, his head tilted in inquiry.

"Well, he isn't quite a fledgling anymore, but yes…." he trailed off, the question clear in his tone.

Lucifer nearly blurted, as much as he could blurt, "I was told he's dead. Raphael smote him for interfering with Chuck Shurley."

"That's impossible," came Gabriel's immediate reaction. "He's alive—I've seen him—and nobody could have resurrected him from being smited by an archangel. Maybe he died some other way."

It lingered in the air unspoken between them that their father could have resurrected him even if his particles had been dissolved to the point of non-existence and then spread to the far corners of the universe by Raphael.

"Michael…" began Lucifer, but he trailed off before he went any further.

They both knew that they could have done it, once, when all of them were working together and had the power of Heaven behind them. They had never done it, of course, because they had never had a reason to bring an angel back to life after one of them had struck him down, but they inherently knew without having to try it that they could, in the same way that they knew Chuck Shurley was the Prophet without having to be told.

What they didn't know was whether Michael alone, or Michael and Raphael together, could have reconstituted the particles from nothingness and used them to reassemble Castiel's grace without help from Lucifer and Gabriel.

"Let's not jump to conclusions," Gabriel said, quite unnecessarily since they had both already done just that. "I'll ask Castiel. I have to talk to him anyway; if he tells Sam that he doesn't trust me, then there's little chance I can convince Sam to say yes."

He wanted to ask what Lucifer would do if their father really had been the one to resurrect Castiel—if He proved that He was still involved, even if only a little. But he was too afraid to do it.

"So," he said instead, opting for shock value, "I was thinking that your vessel is really a hot piece of tail. How about you let me ride your ass while you're riding him?"

Lucifer looked as genuinely startled as Gabriel had ever seen him look in the entire length of his unfathomable existence. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it without saying anything, then opened it again.

Gabriel grinned. "What's wrong, Satan?"

"Nothing," he replied a bit too serenely.

"Is it the incest? I bet it's the incest."

"It's not the incest!"

"So you're fine with the incest?" pressed Gabriel, his face and his grace both straight as an arrow.

" _Gabriel_ …" said his brother in his true voice, the long-suffering tone coming through loud and clear even though a beautiful symphony of harps and drums and deathly stillness and bergs cracking from ice sheets was still ringing in Gabriel's ears.

"Samael," he replied in his own voice, and for the first time in fifty thousand years the sound of trumpets and bells and soothing rainstorms and tsunamis crashing into shorelines filled his being, and he felt almost whole again.

* * *

 **Citations:** I took the dialogue between Sam and Bobby from Episode 5.20, "The Devil You Know."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** Longshanks is a derogatory nickname some people called Aragorn in LotR, referring to his long legs/height. Of course, he only used his invincible ghost army in one battle.


	3. Two Lost Souls (I Wish You Were Here)

**Author's Notes:** The chapter title comes from Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here," written by band members Roger Waters and David Gilmour. If you haven't heard it or have heard it but haven't thought about it in the context of Lucifer, you should give it a listen. (It's better to listen without reading the lyrics beforehand.)

This chapter diverges even further from how things went down in canon, as a result of Gabriel still being alive and interacting with the other characters.

* * *

Gabriel hadn't really known what, exactly, he'd expected it would be like to team up with the devil. Maybe creating some natural disasters, some hell raising here and there. He hadn't had any concrete plans, since he hadn't exactly shown up at the hotel planning to join his brother. But whatever he'd thought, the reality had turned out to be a bit anticlimactic. He'd spent several days in Satan's presence with nary a spot of mass genocide between them.

Or at least none that Gabriel knew about since Lucifer had disappeared for hours at a time without saying where he was going.

Gabriel would have thought that Lucifer didn't trust him if his brother hadn't already entrusted him with all things Sam Winchester. But he had, so there had to be some other reason that Gabriel was being kept out of the loop.

Really, all things considered, nobody should have been surprised when Gabriel took things into his own hands. Finding Lucifer was a bit like following the path of a raging asteroid through a fishbowl, in fact, since to another angel's eyes Lucifer left a trail about that big wherever he went.

His brother was in Nebraska, just over the Kansas border, in the middle of a small town where the biggest feature seemed to be a series of enormous warehouses.

There were dozens of demons milling about, and it took Gabriel a few moments to be able to see past their hideous true faces to the meat suits they were inhabiting. He didn't have much practice identifying demons, after all, since they tended to avoid anything more powerful than they were. He had encountered a handful of them over the past few thousand years, ones powerful enough to think they could easily take out a trickster if they had to. They would've never come within a continent of him if they'd been able to tell that he was an archangel, of course.

He announced himself by asking, "Ugh, how can you stand to be around them?"

Lucifer whirled around with a crackle of grace, the ground trembling beneath them for the few seconds it took him to recognize his younger brother. He appeared more surprised than angry, but then again it never was easy to tell with Lucifer, after the… well, just after.

Gabriel's hidden grace shuddered at the thought, and his wings ached with the effort, but he managed to keep everything concealed.

"How are you doing that?" his brother demanded.

Gabriel shrugged. "Well, I couldn't exactly stay lit up like a Christmas tree, could I? I bet you and Michael would have gotten along long enough to drag me back to Heaven, since that would have been the only force strong enough to make me go back."

Lucifer looked pained for a moment, but only a brief one, before he cleared his face of all expression. They had never spoken of it, but Gabriel could only imagine how much it had hurt his brothers when his grace had appeared to blink out of existence. It had taken him years to learn how to conceal his presence, but it had been necessary. Michael and Lucifer never would have let him stay out of it unless they couldn't find him, and back then he hadn't been ready to accept that he would choose Lucifer over their Father and other brothers.

"I couldn't sense you, Gabriel, but did you know of me?" demanded Lucifer. "When I fell to Earth, did you know?"

There was no way that Gabriel could have prevented the flinch across his vessel's face, but he stubbornly let his still-human eyes meet Lucifer's blazing red-orange ones.

"Yeah, of course I knew." He let out a thin, humorless laugh. "I still can't believe the humans think _they're_ the ones who punched a hole in the ozone layer."

The demons were clearly paying attention to everything they were saying, and a few of the more idiotic ones had even paused their work to watch. Lucifer seemed to realize this at the same time as Gabriel, but that was probably only because he had torn his gaze away from his brother's. He never said a word or made a gesture, but suddenly the air around them was filled with burning sulfur and hellish screams.

Gabriel knew without looking that all of the demons were dead. He wrinkled his nose in distaste.

"They smell worse than they look. Really, brother, I don't see the appeal."

Lucifer laughed. "That was the point of them, to show Father that His new favorites were weak and corruptible. That they didn't deserve for us to love them more than we loved Him."

"I thought maybe it was just revenge," Gabriel replied carefully, keeping his tone neutral. "After Adam and Eve were thrown from the garden and Father didn't change his mind, I thought you knew that He never would."

"Only in retrospect, brother," Lucifer told him, offering a somber smile that full of more malice than anything. "I didn't realize until after I transferred the Mark to Cain that God would never change his mind, and that even if He did _I_ would never be forgiven."

Gabriel felt cold. Not the kind of cold his brother was giving off, but rather the kind that sank deep into his grace and settled at the very center of his being until he felt like he might never feel anything besides helplessness and hopelessness ever again. He was wrong, though—the cold was swiftly followed by a kind of heat that would have made even Michael take notice if he'd been there to witness it, and he felt rage.

"He knew!" cried Gabriel, a hint of his true voice leaking through. "He _knew_ what would happen when He gave you the Mark, and He knew when he created Adam and—and when He had Michael cast you out! How could He do that to you? To _us_?"

Gabriel's self-control was almost non-existent as he allowed himself to think the thoughts he'd actively avoided ever since he'd realized that the Mark their Father had pressed into Samael's grace was corrupting his brother. As painful as it would have been to allow himself to think it back then, the eons of avoidance were making it much worse to think about it now. His grace, which he had carefully concealed for thousands of years, was on the verge of bursting out all at once, which would reveal him to his other brothers and likely remove half of North America from the map. But he couldn't control it, he couldn't stop, he couldn't….

Then his brother's arms came around him and he was surrounded by Lucifer's grace as if he were still that baby archangel accidentally destroying his favorite planets because he didn't have a handle yet on his immeasurable power.

He really should have recoiled at the darkness, at the evil that had infected his brother, but instead he curled himself deeper into the embrace and allowed himself to be calmed. He'd been starved of real affection for too long, and he couldn't even imagine what it had been like for Lucifer.

Eventually, Lucifer said, "It was all I thought about for the first ten thousand years I was in the cage. The Mark was gone and I could see everything I had done with clear eyes, but I could also see that our Father had given me the Mark knowing what it would do to me."

Gabriel made a noise somewhere between a growl and a sniffle, and reached back to curl his fingers into the feathers of his brother's second wing. Lucifer stiffened for a moment, then relaxed.

After a moment, he declared, "I think that's enough for today, little brother."

But although Gabriel was the youngest archangel, he was still an archangel, and he was having none of Lucifer's avoidance.

"No," he said, his tone harsh and brooking no argument in a way he'd never used before on his older brothers. "It will never be enough. The Mark affected you for billions of years, and then you were locked in that cage for tens of thousands of years. And Father knew. Well, fuck him."

Lucifer pulled back from their embrace and put his hands on both of Gabriel's shoulders, scrutinizing him with a disapproving look. "This is blasphemy, brother."

Gabriel laughed, but it was with more incredulity than humor. He almost couldn't believe that Lucifer could have such a double standard for himself versus his younger brother.

"I was already there when I decided to join you, Lucifer. Now I'm just demanding that you include me in your plans."

"Demanding?" echoed Lucifer. He sounded at once disbelieving and proud. "Of me?"

"I'm not your bitch, Lucifer," Gabriel told him matter-of-factly, remembering Dean Winchester's accusation when he'd found out Gabriel's identity. "I am your brother. I may be your _younger_ brother, but I'm Loki the trickster god, and Gabriel the arch-fucking-angel, and I have tricks even you don't have, Lucifer. And I've killed more people than you."

There were several seconds when Gabriel didn't know exactly how Lucifer was going to react, especially to the challenge that his little bro knew things even he didn't. Of course, it was self-evident that it was true, given that Gabriel had tricked Lucifer with his own ploy back at the hotel and that he still hadn't explained to his brother how he concealed what he was. But that didn't mean Lucifer would appreciate it; even though he'd been free of the Mark for tens of thousands of years, he had still been isolated in a cage in Hell and cut off completely from Heaven, and his mental state wasn't exactly what Gabriel would describe as stable. Even if he'd never say so to his brother's face. Or to anyone else's either.

Then Lucifer's lips quirked upwards and his uppermost wings fluttered just a bit, and he did what he usually did instead of apologizing: He explained, "I'm distributing the Croatoan virus through swine flu vaccines."

Gabriel nearly choked on his own saliva, and he did tug hard enough on Lucifer's feathers to make his brother wince.

" _What_?"

"Don't worry, Gabriel. I think the humans have ruined Earth enough as it is without turning them into mindless animals—when I get rid of them it will be a cleansing, not a plague. The Winchesters will stop the virus before it gets too far along."

The archangels' brand of precognition came primarily in the form of being able to see every possible future outcome from every possible decision, but they weren't able to tell conclusively which choices would be made and, therefore, which future would result. There were only a few events in the universe that were immutable—that would happen no matter what and no matter _how_ they happened. This was not one of them.

"How can you be sure?" he demanded.

Lucifer grinned, his eyes gleaming and his grace sparking. "Oh, I have faith in Sam."

"But why bother at all?"

Lucifer smiled again and leaned forward to press his forehead against Gabriel's.

"Because, little brother, I want to know what my vessel is capable of."

* * *

Gabriel wasn't really surprised when he heard Sam praying for him, but he was more than a little disappointed to find out the reason.

"You killed Pestilence's handler," he repeated slowly, as if he hoped that he would find some new meaning in the words the longer they stayed on his tongue, "before you found out the horseman's location."

Sam had the good sense to look contrite, but that might have had more to do with Dean's glare than Gabriel's.

"He killed Jess!" exclaimed Sam.

Gabriel pinched the bridge of his nose. "I know all about just deserts, Sam. I would have even helped you get revenge if you'd asked. But _after_ you found out what you needed to know."

"That's what I said!" inserted Dean. "I would've helped you gank the bastard, Sammy, but right now finding Pestilence is more important."

Sam pursed his lips and looked down at his hands.

"Look, I'm sorry, but it's done now." He looked back up at Gabriel with puppy, dewy eyes. "But you can help. You will, won't you?"

The world was definitely going to fall at Lucifer's feet once he had those eyes, Gabriel decided. Gabriel was beyond annoyed at the kid and wanted to tell him to deal with his own problems, and even he was faltering at that expression. He'd already given up on his Groundhog Day plan because he couldn't stand to torture Sam Winchester. He'd just wanted to teach him a lesson about letting go of Dean, but after he'd seen Sam's sad, tortured eyed he'd realized that he'd gone too far. And now it looked like he was going to cave again.

"I told you I wouldn't help, Winchester," he said harshly, but he only enjoyed his righteous indignation for a few moments before he saw the defeated slump of Sam's shoulders and the way he hung his head again. Gabriel sighed. "I guess you've made a liar out of me. I hate lying."

Dean snorted and placed a hand on his brother's shoulder. "Hey, Michael Knight, can we go back to the part where you faked your death? Twice?"

Gabriel laughed.

"I think I owe you an apology, Dean-o. I thought you were just like Michael, but _he_ doesn't have a sense of humor at all, and he'd never defend any of us after we made a mistake." His laughter faded as his mind wandered to his family, but then he realized that he might be able to start making Sam sympathetic for the devil. He bowed his head and continued, "Lucifer defended Michael even when Mikey didn't deserve it, but Michael never defended Lucifer for a second, not even when he deserved to have someone defend him."

"Yeah, I'm sure that hurt Satan's feeling real bad," said Dean impatiently, and Gabriel had to dig his fingernails into the palms of his hands to stop from killing him again. "Can you tell us where Pestilence is or not?"

"Yeah, I can tell you right now. But I won't."

Sam, who had been glancing up hopefully at the archangel from beneath his hair, jerked his head the rest of the way up in surprise. "But—"

"But nothing," interrupted Gabriel. "You clearly don't have your head in the game, so I'm benching you for the night. Sleep, both of you. Pesty will still be there tomorrow. I promise that the world won't end before then."

Dean grumbled about it as he stripped off his t-shirt and jeans, but his protests seemed to be more out of obligation than any real feeling. He fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit his pillow. Sam, on the other hand, laid back fully dressed and stared up at the ceiling seemingly without any intention of falling asleep. As soon as Dean started lightly snoring, Gabriel made himself visible again and perched on the edge of Sam's bed near his head.

"I could tell that you wanted to ask for more," he began without preamble. Apparently he had been correct about not needing to elaborate. Sam knew immediately what he was talking about, even though Gabriel didn't even need to be an archangel to see the indecision and the stubborn denials on the tip of Sam's tongue. Gabriel held up his hand to forestall Sam's protests and continued, "It's good that you want to know about him. That's the only way you're going to stand a chance of beating him."

Sam's eyes widened for a moment, and then his forehead scrunched as he stared at the angel with a mix of challenge and curiosity. "I'm going to beat him by hearing bedtime stories about him?"

"No. You're going to have a _chance_ of beating him by learning about what makes him tick," Gabriel corrected coolly.

Sam stared at him for several long seconds, then finally settled on saying, "I don't understand."

Gabriel would have laughed if he hadn't thought that would turn Sam away from the desired path.

"There is absolutely no chance that you will be able to overpower my brother with brute force, but what you may be able to do is attack his emotional weaknesses hard enough to distract him. If you get really lucky, you may be able to regain temporary control of the vessel when he's thrown for a loop, but there's no way we can actually plan for that. What's important is just that you distract him well enough that he doesn't see me coming."

He left it there, but Sam was a smart guy. It only took him a second to realize that Gabriel intended to personally shove Lucifer back into the cage.

"Okay." Sam swallowed and looked down at where he'd twisted his hands into the scratchy hotel comforter. "Okay. So… Lucifer deserved someone to be on his side, once upon a time?"

Gabriel would have liked to come right out and tell the kid that Lucifer still deserved to have someone on his side, but he settled for answering, "Yeah. He was the brightest of any of us, and he was Father's favorite and most trusted son. He was the one who took care of me and Raphael. He taught me to fly and how to harness my power and that I should always appreciate the beauty of our Father's creation." Gabriel smiled then, because he didn't want Sam Winchester to see the water building up in his vessel's eyes. "And he also taught me how to play tricks and cause general mischief, of course. He wasn't perfect, and neither was I. We were both too inquisitive, too impulsive. But Mikey and Raphe weren't perfect either, you know: Mikey was too serious, too unforgiving, and Raphe followed in his footsteps. But we all loved each other, and we loved our Father, and we were happy."

Sam looked like there were a million questions he wanted to ask. He ended up asking, "What happened?"

Gabriel sighed and conjured a small hurricane in one of his hands just to give himself something else to think about.

"We all helped Father lock away an evil so powerful that I can't do it justice without using words that would incinerate you. Lucifer was the one God trusted with the key to that particular cage. It was a Mark; our Father seared it into my brother's grace, and the evil it was designed to hold started to bleed through."

"Are you saying that Satan only did what he did because he was infected by some kind of outside evil?" Sam asked incredulously.

He looked less than willing to believe it, and so Gabriel decided that now wasn't the best time to bring up how similar Lucifer and Sam really were. Instead he focused on Lucifer and their brothers.

"Yes. No." Gabriel made a show of vanishing the miniature hurricane and letting out a great huff of breath. "It's complicated, Sam. Archangels were never automatons—Lucifer was always prone to question why Father did something, and he was always very proud of his position, which allowed him more leeway with Father than the rest of us had and probably only fueled his innate curiosity. But Michael, as much as he believes otherwise, was also full of pride, and that translated into jealousy that Lucifer was the favorite son and not him, even though he always did what our Father wanted without question. I never really begrudged Lucifer his position, because I had never been father's favorite—Michael was the oldest, so he had been before Lucifer was created, you see—and I never wanted the responsibility of everything my older brothers were asked to do, but I was envious that Lucifer knew so much that I didn't and I was definitely jealous of Michael because I wanted Lucifer to think as highly of me as he did of Mikey. Raphael had a tendency to be judgmental of any slight deviation from how he thought things should be, and he could be quite hurtful in trying to prove his point."

Sam seemed utterly fascinated by the dynamics. He was leaning towards Gabriel and watching his face so closely as he spoke that Gabriel might have been uncomfortable if he were anyone else. He offered Sam a small, sad smile.

"So the Mark just took traits that Lucifer already had and made them so much worse. It corrupted his innate goodness and blinded him to his own faults, which made him think that what he was doing in his pride and jealousy _were_ the right things. But it didn't happen overnight, Sam, and it didn't corrupt him completely. It happened over billions of years, but he still loved us. When he tempted Eve and when he created Lilith, he was trying to prove to our Father that the humans didn't deserve for him and me and our brothers to love them more than Father. For Michael, Father's declaration that we ought to love the humans more than Him was enough, and there was nothing that could have lessened the weight of Lucifer's sin in questioning Father's order."

"Maybe he truly believed in what he was doing, or maybe he was blinded by his own jealousy and the opportunity to be the good son again, but in the end, when Father ordered Michael to cast Lucifer out of Heaven, he did it without question and without hesitation and without defending our brother or trying to help him overcome the corruption."

Sam sucked in a breath and glanced over at Dean, and Gabriel respected his privacy too much to peek inside his head at whatever thoughts had produced that downtrodden expression on his face.

After a few moments, Sam turned back to him and concluded, "And being away from his family and surrounded by the humans only made it worse."

"Yeah, it did," replied Gabriel. "And he was only on Earth for a few decades—nothing to an archangel—before he corrupted Lilith and convinced Cain to kill Abel, and then Father and Michael threw him in the cage and he was alone for nearly two hundred thousand years."

Sam was breathing rather heavily now, as if he were on the verge of hyperventilating. He clenched and unclenched his fist in the comforter and drew up his knees to rest his head on them. Gabriel wasn't sure whether he should interrupt or let the hunter be, but then, just as Gabriel was about to speak again, Sam groaned and said probably the most insightful thing either of them could have said.

"Oh my God."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** Trivia fact—the phrase really is "just deserts," not "just desserts." When the word is spelled like the dry arid place—"desert"—but pronounced like the after-supper sweets, it means "reward or punishment which is deserved."

Michael Knight is Knight Rider. In the pilot episode he is Michael Long, but his death was faked, he had a face transplant, and he became Michael Knight the Knight Rider.

You may have noticed, if you haven't just started reading, that I changed the archangel's timeline a bit. There is some vague and possibly contradictory information on the show, so what I have decided is that God created the archangels trillions of years ago, well before our universe was created (this is justified in canon by Death telling Dean that we are one planet in one universe that is barely out of diapers). They helped Him to lock away the Darkness, which took billions or maybe trillions of years to accomplish (remember that Amara said that God and Lucifer "conspired for eons" to lock her away), and only then, after he was sure that Amara wouldn't ruin it, did God create our universe. The history of our universe and of our evolution happened more or less scientifically, so there were billions of years between when Lucifer took the Mark and when the first humans were created about two hundred thousand years ago. The two hundred thousand number is an estimate based on when the first modern humans appeared and when the evolutionary Adam and Eve (the Y-chromosome and X-chromosome that all humans on Earth are descended from) are calculated to have existed. I'm sure that we humans like to condense it all into more or less recorded history since civilization as we know it emerged 6000 years ago, but I can't let that one fly in my mind.


	4. Trust Is a Four-Letter Word

The Winchesters were clearly insane. Dean had gone to sleep well after midnight, and Sam well after that, but they were both bright-eyed and bushy tailed at six o'clock that morning, praying to Gabriel to get his feathery ass in gear. Of course he had only left in the first place to lock down Pestilence's location, and he didn't need to sleep or rest, but that didn't make the hunters any less crazy for being up at the crack of dawn.

"My ass is totally featherless," he said by way of greeting. "It's hairless, too. Wanna see?"

Dean looked vaguely grossed out, but the corners of Sam's mouth turned up.

Before his older brother could respond, Sam replied, "Maybe after you help us get the ring."

Gabriel held up his hand and pretended not to notice the way Sam flinched as if he were about to do something with it.

"Woah, woah, woah! Hold up, hotshot. I said I would tell you where Pesty is. I never said I would help you get his ring."

"Come on!" complained Dean. "You coulda already got the ring if you'd wanted, couldn't you? The least you can do is give us more than a pin on a map!"

If Gabriel hadn't already been well versed in the stubborn impudence of Winchesters, he would have been tempted to send Dean into a pocket reality where Impalas didn't exist and no women found him attractive. As it was, he merely rolled his eyes.

"What part of 'I don't want my brother to know I'm alive' don't you idiots get? Lucifer would notice me zeroing in on Pestilence before I could get within a hundred-mile radius. Even if I were able to get away with the ring before Luci rained Hell fire down on my perfectly smooth ass, my element of surprise would be gone and the plan blown."

Dean's already stern expression deepened into one of consternation, which only made his well sculpted face look even prettier, damn him.

"What plan?" he demanded.

Sam looked at Gabriel with a distinctly pleading expression, then at anything besides his brother after Gabriel crossed his arms over his chest and pursed his lips in silent disagreement. Dean's green eyes flitted between them, growing harder with each pass.

"Sam," he all-but growled. "What. Plan?"

Sam seemed to bite his nails pretty much subconsciously when he was under extreme stress, and Gabriel didn't know whether he wanted to smack the overgrown man's hand away from his mouth or wrap him up in his wings and promise to make it all go away. Which really confused him. It hadn't been that long ago that he'd felt little more than annoyance for Sam Winchester. The kid could be stubborn to the point of being thickheaded, and he was operating under an incredibly frustrating combination of self-righteousness and self-loathing, and he was an enormous pain in Gabriel's ass. But Gabriel kind of respected his unwavering tenacity, and he'd rarely met anyone who held onto so much faith despite all the crap that had been piled onto him. Plus he had to admit that Sam loved his brother as much as Gabriel loved his.

Gabriel had hurt a lot of people under his Father's orders, but he had always believed that they deserved it, even if he hadn't always understood why. He had always believed that Father wouldn't have ordered him to destroy anything or anybody that wasn't truly wicked, and he still believed that. He had to. And when he'd taken up his Loki persona, he had always chosen people who really deserved what they got—maybe Dad wouldn't agree, but He wasn't around to say what He thought, so screw Him anyway.

But Sam hadn't deserved what Gabriel had done to him at the Mystery Spot. Sure, he'd justified it to himself as being in both Sam's and the world's best interests that Sam not go out of his mind with grief and allow himself to be manipulated into freeing Lucifer, and that was kind of true.

It was even more true that Gabriel had thought it was in his own best interest not to have to watch his brothers destroy each other, and that had been his motivation more than anything.

He'd felt bad about it when Sam had pleaded with him to give him back the last months he'd thought he would ever have with his brother. Gabriel had never tortured anyone who hadn't deserved it before. Now that he had Lucifer back, Gabriel had allowed himself to feel everything he'd been repressing for millennia, and he felt even more terrible for putting Sam through the same kind of torture he'd experienced during Lucifer's fall.

And Sam had been stronger than Gabriel had ever been. Sure, he'd done the wrong thing, but he'd done it thinking that he was fighting for his brother. Gabriel had run away without fighting for his, and that was an awful thing to admit.

He was angry at both Winchesters all of a sudden—at Sam for doing what Gabriel never had back then, and at Dean for not properly appreciating it as much as Gabriel thought he should.

"You can't do this!" Dean was shouting when Gabriel finally snapped, both literally and figuratively.

The brothers both stopped and swung to look at him, then at each other, as if to determine what the Archangel-turned-Trickster had done to them with that bit of magic.

"Listen up, assholes," he said, his voice more strident than usual as he tried to cover his emotions. He pointed at them in turn. "You, Gigantor, shouldn't have tried to do this behind your brother's back, or at least you shouldn't have dragged me into it until you were ready to tell him. And you, Dean-o, should respect his choice to save the world instead of his own hide. Don't bother praying to me again until you're both completely committed to the plan."

* * *

Lucifer was holed up in a ratty hotel in what used to be a good area of Columbus, Ohio. Gabriel normally would have been overflowing with negative comments on the location and décor, but today his eyes were all for his brother, who was hunched over a manuscript written in some dead language Gabriel didn't currently care enough to identify. Lucifer looked up when Gabriel touched down on the grimy carpet, even though Gabriel's grace was pouring out of him and Lucifer couldn't have possibly needed to look to see who had disturbed him.

The fact that his brother took comfort in seeing him made Gabriel's eyes burn with unshed tears.

Lucifer looked nonplussed for a moment before his eyes narrowed in growing anger. Gabriel could see where that was going—Lucifer was gearing up to obliterate whoever had made baby bro cry.

He choked out, "Your vessel chews on his fingernails."

That hadn't been at all what Gabriel had planned to say. Lucifer looked just as confused as Gabriel felt. He blinked once at his brother, leaning back in his uncomfortable hotel chair as if to get a better look at him.

"I'll, uh… make him stop?"

Gabriel let out a pitiful little chuckle that was halfway obscured by a sniffle. "He fought for his brother."

"Gabriel, you're not making any sense," his older brother told him almost gently. Well, it would have been almost gently if his tone hadn't been tinged with frustration at Gabriel and with a lingering, as-yet-undirected anger, just in case it turned out that he needed to smite someone after all, but Gabriel knew what he meant.

"Sam fought for Dean!" Gabriel threw up his hands haphazardly and sucked his snot back up into nostrils. "He didn't care about himself or the other people he loved or the innocent strangers he hurt along the way or that even if I resurrected Dean it would only last for a few months before Hell came calling—he just cared about getting his brother back!"

Lucifer still looked as confused as ever. His vessel's blue eyes were wide now, and he had brought his thumbnail up to his mouth in such a familiar way that Gabriel couldn't help but laugh.

Lucifer looked on with genuine concern.

"Is this some sort of fit of hysteria?" he asked.

"I didn't do that for you!" the youngest archangel finally managed to blurt out. "That's why you don't completely trust me!"

Lucifer went completely still, not even allowing his vessel to breathe or blink for several seconds.

Finally, he bit out, "What?"

"You didn't share your thoughts with me or ask me to support you before you fell, and you didn't try to find me or ask me to join you after you fell, and now you won't share your thoughts or plans with me unless I beg, and—"

"No!" shouted Lucifer, shooting up from his chair with so much force that it flew into the wall several feet behind him.

Gabriel stopped talking abruptly and only barely remembered to snap his mouth closed. His older brother's eyes were glowing a vibrant red-orange, and Gabriel took an involuntary step backwards. He wasn't afraid of Lucifer; he was just afraid of Lucifer's reaction and of hearing his brother confirm everything he'd said. It had always hurt badly enough when Michael had chastised him for not showing a proper amount of decorum for an archangel or when Raphael had lobbed harsh words at him when they had disagreed about how Father wanted them to complete a task. Hearing the truth from Lucifer would be the most painful thing to endure, though.

"I do trust you," Lucifer insisted. "I trust you too much. That's why I was so angry when I thought that I'd been wrong, that you were choosing Michael or even humans over me."

Gabriel trembled. "That doesn't even make sense! You shared your thoughts and misgivings with Michael, Archangel of the Enormous Flaming Sword and Even More Enormous Stick Up His Ass, but you didn't tell me!"

That Lucifer neither smiled nor chastised his brother for that description of Michael was testament to how focused he was on the issue at hand.

"I didn't want you with me!" he declared fiercely.

He seemed to realize a moment later that he had revealed too much with too little care. Gabriel's grace had deflated to such an extent that it was painful. Lucifer crossed the room between blinks and invaded his brother's personal space.

"Stop," he ordered, his voice harsh with fear. Gabriel looked down, and Lucifer softened his tone and gently cupped his hands around Gabriel's face to tilt his head up until their eyes met. "Brother, of course I wanted you with me for my own sake. But for your sake, I didn't want to expose you to what I was doing or to Father's wrath."

"But Michael—"

"Could take care of himself," Lucifer interrupted gently.

Gabriel squawked in indignation, and Lucifer laughed with his true voice, the sound like a beautiful melody plucked out on several heavenly harps—ones that were just a bit out of tune, as testament to Lucifer's warped Grace, but still beautiful.

"I know that you can take care of yourself too, Gabriel. I have seen the destruction you can cause without even trying. But even though you are literally older than dirt—older even than the atoms that formed the stardust that eventually formed the dirt—you will always be my younger brother, and I will always try to shield you. Even if you don't really need me to."

Gabriel was so touched that he couldn't even think of anything appropriately inappropriate to say, so instead he leaned up and buried his face into the neck of his brother's much taller vessel. And Father help him that his brother would be a good three or four inches taller when he got sweet Sammy's hot bod….

Lucifer tolerated the embrace for a few seconds before he began struggling to get away.

"Gabriel! Gross!" he complained loudly. "Your vessel is leaking!"

Gabriel deliberately wiped his runny nose on his brother's collar. "Yeah, they tend to do that."

It was really quite amusing that the Devil didn't mind being covered in blood and guts and Leviathan slime and other tissues from all manner of beings that the archangels had been tasked with exterminating over the years, but he was freaking out about a bit of snot. Gabriel would have taken that as license to mock his brother incessantly for the rest of eternity, except that Lucifer sighed his defeat and wrapped his arms around Gabriel with such deliberate gentleness that Gabriel didn't want to do anything to stain the memory for either of them. Lucifer had always been kind and gentle with his younger brothers, at least until the Mark had begun its work and corrupted him. Gabriel had missed it more than he'd known until that moment.

After a while, Lucifer extricated himself from the embrace just enough to see Gabriel's face and said, "Now, brother, you have to tell me what brought on all of this."

"Oh," Gabriel replied rather dully, "it's just the usual Winchester crap. Dean is trying to deny the hopelessness of the situation and that he can't keep his brother safe this time, while Sam has accepted it but is keeping that a secret from Dean because he knows that Dean won't want to face it. But it just made me so angry to see it…"

Lucifer released a chilling laugh. "That sounds familiar."

Gabriel didn't have to point out that the Winchester brothers were literally meant for Michael and Lucifer. They could both see the parallels well enough without anybody having to say it aloud.

* * *

 _Gabriel… Gabriel, come on._

The archangel sighed and buried his entire head under his brother's wing to try to block out Sam's voice. The feathers there were as long and broad as a broadsword and as hard as diamonds, but they didn't cut Gabriel's skin like they would have cut anyone else's, even the other angels'. One of the reasons they had never been closer to their younger brothers—besides that whole thing where archangels were created from primordial energies through the first and best efforts of their Father way before God had created the angels—was that their younger brothers were so fragile compared to them. Actually maybe that did have something to do with the whole primordial energies thing.

Anyway, it was a really heady experience to be in such close proximity to wings that could cause tsunamis and tornados, even for another archangel whose wings could do the same.

Unfortunately, one thing his brother's wings couldn't do was block prayers.

 _Please, Gabriel!_

Gabriel's next annoyed exhalation rustled Lucifer's feathers, and his brother finally lifted his wing out of Gabriel's reach and peered down at him with a lifted eyebrow.

"What?" demanded Gabriel. "You try having a direct line in your mind to Sam Winchester's whining."

Lucifer gave him a sardonic smile and laid his copy of the Divine Comedy across his chest so that he could give his brother his full attention.

"I plan to have Sam in my mind all the time," he said.

Gabriel sat up so that he could look Lucifer more fully in the eye, mostly to see if he was kidding. Angels didn't allow their vessels to maintain a connection to their minds; they just didn't. Although most humans were honored to host an angel at first, they quickly changed their minds. And then it was all mental screaming and crying and pleading and scratching and throwing themselves against the walls of your mind. No fun at all.

But Lucifer had such an earnest gleam in his eyes that he was clearly being perfectly serious about letting Sam live inside his head.

Gabriel swallowed once and ventured to ask, "You… you really, uh… care about him, don't you?"

Lucifer stared at him in clear surprise. "He was created for me; of course I love him." He gave Gabriel a searching look. "Don't you love your vessel?"

Gabriel blinked once. Twice. "I haven't even thought of him in thousands of years. He was my vessel, nothing more."

"'Was'? Is he dead?"

Lucifer looked like he actually might be upset at the idea. Gabriel could only lean back and study his brother's face, as if it might contain all of the answers. Which was distantly amusing, since that's the exact same way Daniel had looked at Gabriel when he'd interpreted his visions for him, and how Zacharias and Mary had looked at him when he had announced the impending arrival of their respective sons—granted, Mary had not been as deferential and grateful as she should have been to an Archangel of the Lord, but he'd forgiven her since he had just thrust the idea of immaculate conception into her face.

But he couldn't distract himself from Lucifer's question forever, so he took an unneeded breath and rearranged his wings more comfortably behind him.

"Yes, he's dead. I kept him alive for a while—several hundred years at least, maybe a millennium, I wasn't really keeping track of time back then—but then I decided that I would keep the vessel permanently so I let him go."

"You let him go?" echoed Lucifer, his incredulous tone sharpened by an edge of steel. "I will never let Sam go."

Gabriel could have pointed out that it would be cruel to keep their vessels' souls with them forever. Serving as a vessel was never meant to be a permanent state; after all, neither archangels nor angels were meant to stay on earth forever.

Instead, he said, "Well, Hávarđr wasn't exactly my prophesied vessel of the apocalypse. He was just some guy from my bloodline. And anyway I made use of different vessels several times when Father sent me to Earth, so I never saw them as the companions of my soul or whatever."

His older brother looked at least slightly appeased.

 _GABRIEL!_

Gabriel huffed in annoyance at the intrusion, but he immediately felt bad about being so annoyed when he saw the way Lucifer stared at him, clearly wishing that he were the one Sam were praying to.

* * *

"'I am ready to die'? Really, Gabriel?"

Sam was clearly engaged in an internal war between annoyance and amusement, if the wavering expression on his face was anything to go by. Dean, on the other hand, was obviously unamused.

Gabriel shrugged and carefully peeled down the wrapper of his Snickers Bar. "I like _Harry Potter_."

"That's not even—it's not—You're mixing up _Harry Potter_ references!" Sam pointed an accusing finger toward the map of the United States that sat neatly folded into a couple of square inches, unless Sam said the magic words. After several seconds of Gabriel staring back at him with complete unconcern, he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose instead. "Pestilence said that we were too late. Do you know what he meant?"

"Uuhhh… I don't know," replied Gabriel. "Did they really land on the moon? How do you make your hair look like that? Why does anyone pretend that Splenda tastes like the real thing? I said that I'd tell you where Pesty was, not that I'd answer all the burning questions of the universe for you."

"Yeah, okay, you're hilarious," Dean cut in sharply, "but a Horseman of the Freakin' Apocalypse just told us that we're too late for something, so we don't really have time for your crap."

Gabriel made a show of spreading his arms wide in surrender, although the effect was no doubt ruined by the half eaten candy bar clutched between his fingers.

"Okay, okay! I could help."

The look of sheer relief that passed over Sam's face told Gabriel all that he needed to know. The kid was drowning and thought that Gabriel could hold his head above water for him.

He sat down heavily in one of the rickety chairs. "That's good. Really good."

"I said I _could_ help, not that I would," Gabriel pointed out.

Sam's face fell immediately, but Dean's face only hardened even more than before, until he resembled Michael on Gabriel's worst days. He pinned Gabriel with a knowing glare and, "What do you want?"

Gabriel didn't bother to deny it.

"I want to join the team," he said immediately. "Full-fledged member, no keeping me out of the loop. You tell me what you know and I will tell you what I know."

Dean looked even unhappier than before, and Gabriel was momentarily insulted at the train of the man's thoughts. Making a deal with him was not like making a deal with Ruby, thank you very much. Well, except for the whole thing where he actually was cozying up to Sam in order to manipulate him into helping Lucifer. Like Ruby had done. But it was totally different. Obviously.

On the other hand, Sam seemed to have a pleasing amount of cautious optimism behind his hesitancy. "You've been refusing to come off the sidelines from the start. Why change your mind now?"

Gabriel flexed his uppermost wings. Although the Winchesters couldn't see what he had done, they both felt the disturbance in the atmosphere and eyed him warily. He ignored their reactions and carelessly flung his empty wrapper onto Dean's bed, conjuring another candy bar in its place.

"What can I say? I really dig the uniforms. Do I have to supply my own lumberjack shirts or do you have spares?"


	5. Deadbeat

"I'll never understand you humans," Gabriel announced as he settled himself onto the arm of the sofa next to Sam. "What with all the selling your souls for the slightest reasons."

Sam jumped in surprise and brought his arm up instinctively before his brain caught up and recognized who had just appeared next to him. He was a huge guy, and his blow was powerful enough that it would have knocked Gabriel right off the couch and onto the floor, if hitting Gabriel hadn't been something like hitting a thirty-five-hundred-year-old sequoia.

Then there was a sawed off pointed at his face.

"What the hell is going on?"

Sam pushed the gun away from Gabriel's nose even as the archangel crossed his eyes to get a better look, which Gabriel appreciated even though it really wouldn't have done anything to him. The kid did care! He leaned back against Sam's broad, manly shoulder and grinned at the old hunter with an expression that would have tried the patience of Father himself.

"He's here to help, Bobby," insisted Sam in that pleading, earnest Sam Winchester voice that made Gabriel's feathers go all fluffy.

Bobby kept his glare firmly trained on Gabriel for a few oppressive seconds, then shifted his eyes to Dean, bypassing Sam entirely.

"That true?"

"Oh, come on! You guys didn't tell him about me?" Gabriel crossed his arms petulantly over the hideous plaid shirt he had conjured up just for the occasion. "I thought I was part of the team now!"

If Gabriel wasn't quite mistaken—and who was he kidding, he was hardly ever mistaken—then the stern, annoyed look on Dean's face was totally a front to hide his amusement at Gabriel's outfit. The older Winchester crossed his arms across his chest in much the same way Gabriel had his own.

"Yeah, it's true. But what I don't get is why he's suddenly all gung ho to have you and Crowley know he's alive."

As an archangel, Gabriel didn't have to keep an eye on Crowley to know that he was trying to pop out of the house. It was a good thing he didn't have to look, too, because the last thing Gabriel wanted to do was stare at the hideous, mangled soul underneath the surface of the meat suit. He had long since learned to focus on humans' vessels instead of their souls, although it had him taken centuries and he was still occasionally blindsided by particularly spectacular souls if he wasn't expecting it, like when he'd first seen Dean's and Sam's. But he hadn't spent any time around demons to be able to train himself otherwise, so with his archangel sight he couldn't help but see their true forms. He looked as little as possible.

Gabriel snapped once and wagged his finger in Dean's direction. "Good question, Dean-o! I'll tell you why: The old man isn't—Sam, stop wriggling like a sack full of kittens! I'm trying to get comfortable here!—isn't quite as big an idiot as the rest of you, and what the demon knows doesn't signify now that you don't need him."

Everyone in the room turned to look at Crowley, who had gone tense with surprise and fear when he realized that he couldn't leave. Sam shifted uncomfortably underneath Gabriel's surprisingly heavy weight and craned his head to see around the archangel's body.

Crowley turned slowly on his heel to face the room with a confident smirk, as though he hadn't been trying to flee. "Now, now, we're all friends here. I've helped our dear boys locate Death. I want Lucifer dead as much as anyone."

Gabriel barely managed to contain himself from smiting the little piss-ant. He could have explained it away to the hunters and his baby brother, or else he could have taken their memories of the event if he couldn't explain it away. So that wasn't stopping him. No, the only thing that was stopping him from burning away the remains of the King of the Crossroads' tattered soul from the inside out was that Crowley was actively working to betray Lucifer, his master and Gabriel's most beloved brother, and Gabriel thought that prolonged torture would be a more fitting punishment.

Oh, yeah, and also probably Lucifer would like to be the one to ultimately kill the guy. After Gabriel was through with him. Maybe.

"You don't need to worry about Lucifer," he informed the demon seriously, letting his eyes glow a flat gold. "Lucifer's not here… and I'm a lot less friendly to demons than my brother is."

Then Crowley vanished from thin air, and there was perfect, complete silence. Gabriel could feel Sam's muscles tense beneath him, but he didn't say anything. Dean made a few indistinct noises, and Bobby seemed to be in shock.

Somewhat to Gabriel's surprise, it was Castiel who spoke up first. "Brother, perhaps you can convince the demon to return Bobby's soul before you kill him."

It hurt to look at Castiel's diminished Grace, but Gabriel finally turned to face him fully, offering a smile. "Don't worry, Castiel, I'm sure that a few years reliving his life from infancy with his human mother will do a world of good for his attitude."

Dean snorted with laughter and reached out to give Sam a friendly punch on the arm, presumably because he couldn't reach Gabriel. "Dude, that's awesome!"

"Yes, well," Gabriel said, turning his glowing eyes on the hunters, mostly on Dean and Bobby, "if _someone_ had mentioned me, then _someone else_ wouldn't have felt the need to sell his soul to a demon just to find out where Death is."

They were obviously a bit disconcerted at seeing him like this. Distantly Gabriel realized that the hunters had never seen him for what he really was. Oh, they knew what he was, of course, but he had never acted like it around them before.

"Balls!" the old one exclaimed.

Gabriel could concur. He finally let the light dim from his eyes and a half pitying, half amused smile curl the edges of his vessel's mouth.

"Why're you in that chair anyway?" he asked Bobby.

Everyone turned nearly as one to glare at him, and Sam tried again to wriggle away. He was unsuccessful, of course. Obviously.

Gabriel shrugged. "What? Do you have some sort of fetish I'm not supposed to talk about?"

Bobby's face hardened in fury and poorly concealed grief. "No, jackass, I'm paralyzed!"

Gabriel blinked and then squinted at the man, tilting his head to get an optimal view of the vessel. He could see the electrical impulses throbbing throughout the hunter's body, and there weren't any blockages or other problems that Gabriel could see.

"Um, sorry to angelsplain your own body to you, but no you aren't."

There were a few moments of shocked disbelief, then a furor as Bobby rose shakily from his wheelchair and Dean rushed forward to flap ineffectively around him offering help the man didn't want. Gabriel finally allowed Sam to displace him so that the younger Winchester could awkwardly embrace the man he considered a surrogate father. For his part, Castiel was staring hard at Bobby's spine, as if he could see the underlying anatomy through his nearly human eyes if he just tried hard enough.

When Sam stopped next to Gabriel and loomed over him where he was perched precariously on the narrow arm of the couch, it became clear to the archangel that they all thought he had been the one to heal Bobby. Now, he knew very well that he ought to disabuse them of that notion immediately if he were a good little archangel. But he wasn't. Hell, neither were any of his brothers, not really. So he smiled magnanimously and allowed himself to preen under the attention of Sam's rather awkward hand on his shoulder.

Then, before Sam or Castiel or anyone else had time to react, he had roused himself from his seat, such as it was, and was standing directly in front of his brother with his hand plopped unceremoniously on the vessel's forehead and halfway covering its eyes. Castiel went rigid, which Gabriel had anticipated on account of his having been smited by an archangel before—not that an archangel had to touch someone to smite them—but Castiel had no chance of escaping Gabriel's grasp before he let his own Grace pour into the angel.

The entire ground floor of Bobby's not insubstantial house was filled with rich golden light that crackled and burned through the air, daring anyone to be tempted by its beauty. Cas gasped and staggered to his knees before his older brother, and it was a good thing that the humans were temporarily blinded by his Grace or else Gabriel was sure that Dean would have moved to defend his pet angel.

Once the light show ended, Cas stayed kneeling on the scratched hardwood floor, gazing up at his older brother with heartbreaking awe.

"Brother…" he began, his deep voice cracking as if he desperately needed a drink. "Brother, thank you."

Gabriel shrugged as if it weren't a big deal. And for him it kind of wasn't, given that he had barely used any of his own power to restore Castiel's, and his Grace was already replenishing itself. Archangels had been formed from primordial energies long before God had ever created Heaven, so they and their powers functioned perfectly independently of Heaven. Unlike seraphs and foot soldiers and other lesser angels, the source of whose power was Heaven itself, archangels were their own power sources. Which is why Gabriel was completely undiminished by his time on earth, and why Lucifer had to be locked in a cage to protect the world and was still just as powerful as ever before despite the isolation.

"It should last you a while, but it will fade the same way it did when you were cut off from the Host," Gabriel informed the young angel. "We'll have to charge you up every few months. Assuming we live another few months."

Assuming _Castiel_ lived another few months, that is. Gabriel wasn't entirely sure that Lucifer would let him live after he figured out how he'd been resurrected.

The humans seemed entirely overwhelmed by how awesome Gabriel was, as they should be. He could only hope that Sam remembered his awesomeness after he realized that Gabriel had been helping Lucifer all along. Oh well, it would work out somehow. Gabriel was sure of it.

He conjured up an oatmeal cream pie and offered a grin to belie the seriousness of the room.

"So, how about Death then?"

* * *

Lucifer had relocated to Detroit, to a room just as dismal and disgusting as the last one they'd been in. Gabriel couldn't help the scowl that spread across his face at the sight that greeted him when he landed.

"Luci, baby, will you please let me do something about this… this… hazmat zone?"

Lucifer appeared shocked for a moment at that form of address, but he had been nothing if not adaptable since getting out of his prison and reuniting with his pagan- and human-corrupted little brother, so he let an indulgent little smirk barely curve the corners of his mouth.

"You can do whatever you want with it," he said darkly. "I hardly see how it matters, but then I am used to the conditions of a cramped cage within the darkest, furthest reaches of Hell that Father could dream up to punish me."

That made Gabriel, who had been critically examining the sheets he held between the very tips of two of his fingers, stop abruptly and turn to look at his brother with wide, swimming eyes.

Lucifer immediately regretted his bitter words and held up his hands preemptively, as if he expected Gabriel to launch himself at him bodily. "No, no. Come on, Gabriel, we've already filled our quota for this sort of thing."

He really wanted to ask what time period Lucifer was using as a measurement, because surely they hadn't had enough emotional moments to make up for _all_ of the tens of thousands of years that his brother had been folded up and stuffed into that teensy little cage. In Hell. Which their father had created for the express purpose of punishing Lucifer. But he could tell that Lucifer was in no mood for it, and to be honest Gabriel wasn't either. He hadn't experienced so many emotions since the first few years after leaving Heaven.

Instead, he decided to pile on the bad news while their moods already sucked anyway and announced, "Me and Dean are gonna go see Death tomorrow."

Lucifer turned serious blue eyes on him. "If Death sees you—"

"So what if he does? He can't, you know, kill me," interrupted Gabriel. His brother glared at him for his daring, but Gabriel had stopped being afraid of him ages ago. Or, you know, at least a few days ago. "But I wasn't gonna let him see me anyway. I want to see for myself how he reacts to Dean and how far he is willing to go to be rid of you."

Lucifer could have said any number of things, but he seemed to settle for pointing out, "If he does see you, then there is nothing binding him from making it widely known that you are alive and helping the humans, unless I reveal to him that I know about you."

"I won't be seen," insisted Gabriel, with a general flap of his hand in Lucifer's direction to indicate that he should stop interrupting. "Also Sam and Castiel and Robert Singer are going to take out your little vaccine factory before it can ship the virus."

Lucifer managed to form the first syllable of whatever he was going to say before Gabriel said, "That's not all."

Satan definitely blinked at him in stymied confusion for at least a second and a half before he exclaimed, "What _else_ can there be?"

"Castiel almost definitely wasn't raised by Michael or Raphael. I restored his Grace so that I could do some super invasive checking, and there wasn't a trace of either of our brothers in him. They could have just hidden it or maybe it doesn't work that way in the first place, but…"

"Hmm, yes, either of those is unlikely," supplied Lucifer.

He appeared way calmer than Gabriel would have given him credit for after hearing that their Father had almost certainly personally resurrected a low-level angel. He clenched his vessel's jaw so hard that Gabriel could hear the teeth grinding, and his wings twitched as if he was barely restraining himself from taking flight, but overall he managed not to react overmuch.

Gabriel replaced the awful hotel bed with the monstrosity of down and fluff that he preferred whenever he had a reason to use a bed, then let himself fall back onto it with a contented sigh.

"I just don't see why Father would take the time to bring the little angel back from non-existence but allow him to be completely cut off from Heaven," he grumped.

What he really wanted to know was why God would take the time to resurrect Castiel but wouldn't take the time to intervene any further in the conflict, and hadn't taken the time to check in on any of his children for millennia untold but had decided that Castiel was worthy of his time. But he didn't want to ask either of those thoughts out loud. He was uncomfortable enough just allowing them to flit through the utter privacy of his mind.

Lucifer seemed perfectly happy to take up the distraction Gabriel had offered, although the bitterness had returned to his voice. "It is useless to try to figure out why Father does anything. Nothing He does is sensible or consistent. He created us with free will, yet He cast me out of His sight and out of Heaven altogether when I dared to use that which He had given me. He did not create the humans with knowledge of anything beyond paradise and perfection, yet He punished all of humanity because Eve was incapable of recognizing the deceit and ill intent that He had made sure she was ignorant of."

He sighed and sat on the edge of Gabriel's bed, bowing his head as if in prayer.

"Either He really has little more idea than we do about how things will pan out and is lying about His omniscience, or He knew what would happen and willingly allowed it. Tell me, brother, which is the better way to think of our Father?"

They were both horrible.

Gabriel swallowed thickly and sat up so that he could wrap his arms around his brother. When Lucifer didn't protest at his first tentative gesture, Gabriel squeezed more securely and leaned his forehead against the broad expanse of his brother's back.

When he could no longer avoid the urge to give voice to his thoughts, he whispered, "He knew."

Lucifer reached up to twine his fingers with the ones Gabriel had sprawled across his abdomen.

"Yes," he agreed. His voice was cold and matter-of-fact, without a hint of the despair Gabriel was feeling. "He wanted his little pets to experience it all, and he wanted me to be the one to give it to them. The humans wouldn't care about God if there weren't Satan."

The only thing Gabriel could do was tighten his fingers around Lucifer's and make a sound of distress.

Lucifer pulled the smaller vessel's arms from around himself and turned so that they were face-to-face.

"You should not be so surprised, Gabriel. After all, Father only created us to serve His purpose—at first to help Him defeat Amara, which He couldn't do by Himself, and He must have known what would come next, and then as soon as we weren't useful anymore daddy went out for beer and never came home. But I don't blame you, because I was surprised too when I realized it."

"But He loves us," Gabriel protested, with significantly less conviction than he'd thought he would be able to muster up. He looked up into Lucifer's face and knew that he was pleading with his brother to agree with him. "I know He does."

Lucifer smiled affectionately and pulled Gabriel against his chest, but he didn't offer a reply.

* * *

It turned out that Gabriel was right about the Winchesters being insane.

"We're not going to chop off Death's finger!"

Dean spun away from his conversation with Sam, holding the cursed knife his brother had handed him in one hand and clenching his other fist tightly in annoyance at being snuck up on by the archangel.

"Well, why not? We can't kill him." He paused for a second and shared a significant look with Sam. "Can we?"

The taller hunter bit his lip in indecision. "If the Colt won't work against Lucifer, then why would it work against Death itself?"

"No!" screeched Gabriel. "Just no. We're not going to kill Death! And I don't suppose you mean the herbivorous odd-toed quadruped?"

Dean glared at him for several seconds while he processed the meaning behind what Gabriel had asked, but Sam got it immediately.

"No, the repeating single-barrel revolver," he supplied, just a hint of smug know-it-all creeping into his voice. "It was made by Samuel Colt and can kill anything we've ever come across, except Lucifer."

"He said that he's one of five things in all of creation that the Colt can't kill," added Dean. "I shot him in the head from one damn inch away and the fucker got up and shook it off like it was nothing."

The gun was quickly produced for Gabriel's inspection. Dean, Sam, Bobby, and Castiel wanted to know what the other four things in all of creation were, and Gabriel just wanted to examine the thing for himself. He could definitely feel the magic emanating from it as soon as it was pressed into his hand, but he couldn't get a good handle on exactly what it was just by holding the thing.

"Hm," he mused, and then grinned outrageously at the horrified expressions on all their faces as he raised it to his temple and pulled the trigger.

Pain. Pain. Painpainpainpainpainpainpainpainpainpain.

" _Ooooooowwww_!" he whined as soon as he had control of his vessel again. "Ow! No, seriously, _ow_! That is some bad juju!"

Castiel was crouched down next to him in the dirt and sparse, half-dead grass of Singer Salvage Yard, one of his hands halfway extended towards Gabriel's head as if he had been about to try healing him. For all the good that would have done, which would have been zero. The humans had crowded around and were peering curiously down at him from over Castiel's head. Dean looked undecided between anger and laughter, Bobby looked bearded and curious, and Sam… Sammy looked absolutely furious.

He glared at the archangel and let his lips curl into a snarl. "What were you thinking?"

Gabriel grabbed Castiel's shoulders and levered himself up into a sitting position. Not because he needed the help so much as because the discomfort on the angel's face was worth it. Then he contorted his vessel's neck until all the fluid in his vertebrae rushed out of the joints with a pop that sounded almost as satisfying as it felt. Finally, he turned to offer a half-mocking, half-placating smile to his favorite hunter.

"Well, if it couldn't kill my brother then it couldn't kill me."

"Are those the five things then?" asked Bobby before Sam could respond. "God and the four archangels?"

Gabriel ran his finger across his temple and brought his hand to eye level to curiously stare at the blood, just to give himself time to consider his answer.

"No. There are five things, not five beings. There's a difference. There's God and archangels and Death, and then two other things that don't really matter because my brothers and I already got rid of them before this puny little solar system was even created. Maybe I'll tell you about them when we have more time, if we survive the apocalypse."

They didn't need to know about Amara or the Leviathans, although he knew from the looks on their faces that they weren't going to leave him alone until they found out. They would just have to wait until later, because now wasn't really the time to tell earth-shattering stories.

It took a while, but Gabriel finally managed to herd Sam and his two tag-alongs into the van they'd probably stolen for the occasion, and then it was merely a matter of distorting reality for a second or two until he and Dean appeared on the nearly deserted sidewalk in Chicago.

"Aw, man," Dean groaned as soon as he had regained his footing. He was clutching Gabriel's shoulder like a lifeline, but as soon as he realized he was doing it he let go. "I hate that _Harry Potter-y_ thing you guys do."

Gabriel would have taken the opportunity to mock Dean for admitting that he'd read _Harry Potter_ , but the situation at the moment was too serious for even Gabriel to take it lightly. He silently filed away the information for latter ribbing purposes and hooked a hand behind the hunter's elbow.

"C'mon, Dean-o, you've got a date with Death."

Death was sitting alone in a pizza parlor, eating a slice in the girliest way ever with a knife and fork. Gabriel strode across the street, dragging Dean behind him (He had a feeling that if Dean wasn't so invested in his brave, self-sacrificing, manly image, he would have locked up his legs and made Gabriel drag him across the pavement on his stomach like a lazy labradoodle.), and all but shoved the man through the front door with instructions not to mention him.

It was agony to listen to Death's little speech without bursting through the door himself, but he managed it somehow despite his growing anger on behalf of Lucifer and even on behalf of their deadbeat asshole of a father, even though God didn't deserve to have any of his sons defend him. It was especially difficult not to jump into the ring when Death tried to make Dean swear to make Sam jump into the Pit, but Gabriel held his ground.

Dean looked more than a little relieved to see Gabriel once it was over. He had actually been frightened of Death, and Gabriel couldn't remember ever having known him to be afraid of anything before. This pale and shaky Dean Winchester was definitely a new experience, and as they were waiting for Sam and his gang to wipe out all of the demons and Croats (and potential witnesses) and pray for Gabriel to pick them up, Gabriel decided to put him out of his misery.

Gabriel smiled kindly. "Death has always had a jumped up idea of his own importance, but mostly he was just messing with you."

Dean looked stunned beyond anything he had ever been able to imagine, which Gabriel imagined was really saying something for one of the Winchester brothers.

"Just… Wait… Hold on," he spluttered, his voice deepening with each syllable. "He lied to me?"

Gabriel snorted.

"Uh, yeah. 'Oh, I don't remember whether I'm older or God's older, life or death, chicken or egg' as if he's the yin to my Father's yang. Well, he isn't the other side of God's coin. God is Light, and the other side of that coin is Darkness. Death is just death, and the other side of his coin is just life. He only came into existence at the moment God created mortal souls."

"And all the 'Oh, I'm going to reap God,' when he and I both know that he can't do jack to my Father until God _wills_ himself to die, and he can't do jack to Lucifer because angels don't have mortal souls for Death to reap and aren't capable of willing themselves to die like Father is. We either exist or we don't exist, but we don't _die_. If Death could have killed my brothers and me before we locked him in that tomb, he would have."

" _You_ locked him in that tomb?" interrupted Dean.

Gabriel laughed outright this time. "Yeah, who did you think did it? Certainly not Deadbeat Dad, although he did bestir himself enough to request that we do it for him. And if Death could have killed Lucifer before he bound the guy to him, he would have. But he couldn't, just like he couldn't stop me from resurrecting every soul he's ever reaped, if I wanted to, and _without_ turning them into brain-eating zombies like he did."

Dean swallowed once. Twice. Three times.

"Well. Hot damn."


End file.
